Whoo, that was quite the journey I just went through. Dead or Alive is such a weird fixation for me. I got into it through its shared universe with Ninja Gaiden and really got into it after falling in love with the shockingly fun movie adaptation. After that, it started turning into a meme on this blog and now I’ve gone and played every game in the franchise and bought copies of most of them. Oh yeah, that happened over the course of writing this Love/Hate series: I had a couple Dead or Alive games already, but I had so much fun that I went and purchased a whole Xbox One and all the mainline Dead or Alive games just to make them mine forever.

So yeah. I was fond of Dead or Alive when I started this journey. Now, I legitimately and proudly love this series. I still am not very good at fighting games, but I feel satisfied that I now understand how these games play. Hell, I’ll even say there’s a Dead or Alive in my all-time favourite games now. I’m so glad that I got to experience these games for myself, because it’s been an absolute blast. Of course, there’s only so much I can cover in a Love/Hate series, and I’ve got a lot of thoughts that fall outside of the purview of that format that I need to talk about.

Favourite DOA Ladies

I mean, this is a discussion about Dead or Alive, I obviously have to give my ranking of the ladies!

• S-tier: Hitomi, Momiji.
  • Hitomi’s pretty obvious: she’s my main and I love her look and feisty, playful personality.
  • Momiji is gorgeous and from Ninja Gaiden, so she’s got a pretty big leg up on the competition.
• A-tier: Ayane, Helena, Kasumi.
  • I LOVE Ayane, so the fact that she’s in A-tier should show just how much I love the S-tiers. Ayane’s just the best-written character in Dead or Alive, full-stop. The way that her tragic backstory resonates through her actions, character, and sense of duty is clear, but not shoved in your face constantly. Seeing that sense of duty force her to put down her own adopted father was tragic. Seeing her take down DOATEC with Ryu and Hayate was badass. She’s just the coolest.
  • Helena’s over-the-top French accent is cute, she’s easy on the eyes, and she has a pretty cool fighting style, but the most interesting part about her is her place in the story. Seeing how she plotted against Victor Donovan’s faction over the course of three games was cool to piece together. This is especially true for DOA4, where finding out Helena’s role in the story was the big reward for beating all the other campaigns.
  • Kasumi is not a particularly well-developed character across the course of this series, but I really have to appreciate how well she has held up as the face of this franchise. Her unwavering resolve and skill are admirable after all the shit she’s been through.
• B-tier: Tina, Mila, Christie, Lisa, Misaki
  • Tina’s the series’ most overt sex symbol, and I really appreciate that they just committed to it. She also seems like just the sweetest person in these games, telling her father that she’s glad that he still has dreams and ambitions, and encouraging Mila to pursue her own goals. Meanwhile, Tina’s just being the world’s best self-marketer, launching careers for herself in Hollywood, music, and modeling. And, again: communist.
  • Mila is just so down to earth. She works in a diner, trains at a run-down gym, and dreams of being the best if she works hard enough.
  • Christie is the series’ other overt sex symbol. She is a cold-hearted bitch who would kill you in a moment’s notice. Did I ever mention that I love bad women…?
  • Lisa was a big surprise for me during this Love/Hate series. Before I started this, I found Lisa very dull. However, having played all the games, she’s actually really interesting. Her fighting style is really fun, her role in the story actually develops and gets intriguing, and she’s got some of the most over-the-top fanservice outfits in multiple games. It’s also just cool that one of the more important characters in this profoundly Japanese series is a black woman.
  • Misaki’s just really cute. Not much else I can say.
• C-tier: Nyotengu, Leifang, Honoka, Marie Rose
  • Nyotengu is pretty alluring (again, I like bad women), but not enough to make it into a higher tier.
  • Leifang I’ve always found kind of bland and forgettable.
  • Honoka is so egregiously over-the-top that I kind of have to begrudgingly hand it to Team Ninja.
  • Marie Rose’s overall design is very cute, I just wish that they weren’t clearly trying to evoke Lolita fetishists with it.
• D-tier: Kokoro, Rachel, Rio, NiCO
  • Before I started writing this Love/Hate series, I probably would have put Kokoro above Leifang in C-tier, as she was similarly bland to me. However, actually playing as her in these games has really made me dislike her. I just cannot get to grips with her fighting style, and got stuck on her campaign in Dead or Alive 4 for nearly forty minutes as a result. And then she’d show up in another fighter’s campaign and kick my ass over and over. Oh, and having basically no development or importance to these games’ narratives since her introduction makes her feel pointless. She’s just the blandest and most forgettable of the cast, only here because they wanted a geisha character, but forgot to make her do anything else.
  • Rachel is just embarrassing. Why is this giant titty demon hunter woman fighting in bondage gear? It was dumb in Ninja Gaiden, and it’s still dumb here. Such an unsubtle attempt to be sexy that it loops back to being uninteresting.
  • Rio’s so inessential and forgettable that I barely even consider her worth thinking about. It doesn’t help either that she doesn’t even look like she matches the art style of the other characters, which makes her feel entirely out of place.
  • NiCO is an even-more egregious attempt to appeal to Lolita fetishists than Marie Rose. She looks like a literal child. Her overly-serious and sassy characterization make it seem like you’re getting lectured by a kid. Like, move over little girl, an adult’s coming through.

Favourite DOA Characters

Next we’ll look at all the Dead or Alive characters and rank them from most-to-least favourite. I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory:

Dead or Alive Games Ranked

Over the course of this Love/Hate series, I’ve definitely enjoyed some experiences more than others. Here’s how I would rank the series from best to worst:

• S-tier: Dead or Alive 2
  • Dead or Alive 2 was a blast even now. It would have been mind-blowing back in 1999. And the fact that Team Ninja immediately honed in on the triangle system: a way to make their fighting system unique and strategic. This has gone largely unchanged over the course of a quarter century, which is pretty wild to think. The Hardcore version in particular is jam-packed with content. This game has legitimately made a spot in my top twenty five video games of all-time list.
• A-tier: Dead or Alive 3
  • I did really quite like Dead or Alive 3. Its stages are so well-designed, that it’s a crime that none of its successors have even come close to matching it. Oh, and Hitomi was introduced here.
• B-tier: Dead or Alive 5, Dead or Alive Dimensions
  • I really like how Dead or Alive 5 modernized this series’ art style, gameplay, and presentation. I hate its DLC practices and how they infested the series from that point onwards.
  • Dimensions was just fun and really remarkable for how well it played on a 3DS! Made it very easy to just laze around and get in a quick match.
• C-tier: Dead or Alive 4, Dead or Alive 6
  • Dead or Alive 4 is just… underwhelming to me. The story is really interesting. The gameplay just doesn’t feel as good as the previous two games, and the difficulty is borderline unfair at times.
  • Dead or Alive 6 is fine. It’s the newest and flashiest game in the franchise currently, so that gives it a bit of an edge. However, its even more egregious DLC practices, its awful story, and its changes to the core gameplay make it fairly disappointing.
• D-tier: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Dead or Alive, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2
  • Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball doesn’t have a whole lot to do, but that’s kind of why it works better than its follow-ups. The whole thing feels a lot more relaxing – the game isn’t prodding you to accomplish some particular activity, or disincentivizing you from indulging in the more voyeuristic aspects of the game. You get to choose when you want to have a break in the core gameplay, and that’s pretty cool. Also, it really has to be said that this game’s sexy content is legitimately kind of wholesome. It feels a lot less leery or straight-up problematic like the later sequels would become.
  • The original Dead or Alive is okay at best. It’s so archaic and indistinct that there isn’t a whole lot of appeal. Add in that the enemy AI cheats like mad, making winning an exercise in frustration, and this is definitely one of the hardest Dead or Alive games to go back to.
  • Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is here almost entirely for being available on handheld. This makes the game so much easier to stay relaxed and invested in. That said, the game is still pretty poor and content-bereft…
  • Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (and, by extension, Paradise) just gets the short end of the stick due to its grindy, tedious changes to the first Xtreme game’s formula. Could have potentially moved up for its more expansive activity roster (which has yet to be matched), but not being available on handhelds really makes this a tough sell.
• F-tier: Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation
  • Fuck this “game”.

How Would I Direct Dead or Alive 7?

Now this is a fun question! First-off, I’m going to be somewhat realistic here: a mainline Dead or Alive game is not a priority to Tecmo-Koei. They are not going to give a Dead or Alive game a high-tier AAA budget. An expansive, Street Fighter 6 story campaign is probably not on the cards. Nor are its graphics likely to be top of the industry again. And there’s no way that they’re going to allow you to scrap DLCs entirely. So, with a relatively realistic set of limitations in mind, here’s what I’d like to see in a new Dead or Alive game:

How would it play?

I think I would be happiest if Dead or Alive 7 played a bit more like Dead or Alive 3, or maybe 5 too. Gameplay-wise, DOA3 was probably the most fun I had, largely because it played pretty much identically to 2 and had the best, most unique stages. That said, Dead or Alive 3 might feel a bit slow compared to a modern fighter, so Dead or Alive 5 might be a little more to their taste. I think that the recent games’ attempts at making the fighting system accessible have been a good move, and are worth looking into further.

In addition, since Street Fighter 6‘s massive success, there’s the question of entire control shake-ups. It would be pretty cool if Dead or Alive 7 took this same approach, allowing an option to control your fighter more like an action game than a fighting game. I’m not certain how well this would work though – the balance of DOA‘s signature 4-point holds could get knocked out of whack if you could more easily predict what standard combo string would be coming next.

What about the break gauge?

I struggle with this one. I’m a bit meh on the break gauge in Dead or Alive 6, but does that mean it should be scrapped entirely, or can it be improved instead? After some deliberation, I think I’d say that scrapping it is for the best. It does add a bit more strategy in a match, but it can just take over the game, as it invalidates the triangle system entirely when used. More realistically, it just functions as a way to both introduce and balance the break holds system. I appreciate the attempt to innovate, but I just do not think it worked this time.

How much fanservice are we talkin’ here?

Having played through almost every game in this franchise, I think I can say with confidence that Team Ninja might have been onto something with Dead or Alive 6 when they decided to start toning down the sexy costumes.

Don’t crucify me yet!

I don’t want to see a Dead or Alive game remove all the suggestive content: it’s part of the series’ DNA at this point. However, looking back, mainline Dead or Alive games overtly embracing sexual content in-game wasn’t even a thing until after the Xtreme games came out. Since then, it’s generally been used as a way to sell cosmetics. I think that Dead or Alive 3 struck a good balance, but I wouldn’t be opposed to pushing even further than that either. That said, let Xtreme be where you push the envelope. You could legitimately make mainline Dead or Alive more appealing to non-fans and convince more people to check things out – you just have to be careful not to alienate the core fans in the process by playing it up in the marketing.

DLC plans?

While I obviously would like this game to just have everything being unlockable in-game, I’m gonna have to include some sort of DLC. Obviously, we scrap the scummy shit from DOA6 and VV. If we have to have DLC, then the costume DLC from DOA5 was at least fair: see costume you like, buy costume you like. Its only problem was the ridiculous price they demanded. After Core Fighters released, this also made the DLC stores an unnavigable nightmare.

Simply put, I would lower the price of the cosmetics drastically. Maybe even give a way to buy DLC costumes in game – at least that way you’re getting people invested and I find it actually kind of encourages spending some money for a costume you like. As far as DLC goes, I’d probably add a few characters, preferably guest characters rather than original characters. It always feels bad when you get a new character in DLC, then know very little about their personality or story until the next game comes along and shatters your interpretations. Guest characters would at least prevent this from happening. I’m also fine with the sort of costume bundles they released, so if people kept buying them, I’d keep offering them. That’s about the extent of the monetization for me.

If they forced me to do Core Fighters as well, then I’d be a hell of a lot less stingy. Bundle characters, stages, etc together a bit more and, obviously, more reasonably-priced.

What’s the story?

Dead or Alive 6 ended with a pretty heavy implication that Helena’s mother, Maria, had been resurrected. Because of this, I only have two reasonable choices: ignore it entirely, or make the next game’s narrative revolve around this plot point. I think it’s a really fitting development for the series. One of the big, unresolved plot points in the overarching Dead or Alive narrative is that Kokoro’s mother, Miyako, has some sort of relationship with MIST. However, we do not know the nature of this relationship, so there has been a lot of suspicion directed her way by Helena. Miyako is head of DOATEC Japan, so being associated with the villains of the series could have some pretty major implications.

So, all that said, what does Miyako have to do with Maria? Well, this is relevant to me, because it gives us an the emotional core you build the entire narrative around. We’ve got a story of two mothers and two daughters, who you can compare and contrast for stronger thematic and emotional resonance. You could probably work in other parent-child relationships into this narrative to make this even stronger (Hitomi and her father, Eliot and Gen Fu, Ayane and Honoka grappling with the knowledge of who their father was, etc), but I want Helena and Kokoro to be the main focus.

In regards to this A-plot, I would indeed have Maria be the unseen observer at the end of Dead or Alive 6. However, I want this to be a tragedy: Maria’s resurrection is everything that Helena has wished for, so it needs to be bittersweet when she gets it. Maria’s back, but she’s quickly losing herself. NiCO experimented significantly on Raidou, so it seems reasonable that she would do the same to Maria. I would imagine her having a procedure to make her like Alpha-152 (Kasumi’s super-powered clone from Dead or Alive 4). Over the course of the game, she is losing control, on the verge of losing herself forever and becoming an unknowable, angry energy entity. Shortly after the end of Dead or Alive 6, she is discovered by Miyako, who reaches out to Maria and tells her that she has the means to cure her affliction. Maria doesn’t particularly trust Miyako, but is desperate enough to accept her help…

I’m not going to get into all the plot details, but we’re going to make this take place about six months after Dead or Alive 6. Like Dead or Alive 5, the first half of the narrative will revolve around the tournament. I considered weaving the tournament and conspiracy plots together more directly, but I ultimately decided against it. I actually kind of like that the tournament gets to be its own thing in these narratives. It lets the tournament be one narrative arc with its own heroes and champions, while the conspiracy plot can have its own separate important characters. This ultimately means that you can have more central characters doing things without having to spread them all thin across a narrative trying to find something for them to do. I like how they handled this in DOA5 and 6, where you get a fair amount of build-up from the characters to show their motivations going into the tournament. In particular, I have some ideas to develop certain characters:

• Tina’s thing in these games is that she always has a new venture she wants to launch using her appearance in the tournament to drum up interest. In Dead or Alive 6, it was a dream to become governor, until she found out that she’s too young to run. However… I want her to pursue this. Tina doesn’t seem like the sort to just give up. I want her to knuckle-down and say “No, I actually want this dream to come true” and start putting in the groundwork to win an election in five years. Her goal in the tournament will be to make people aware of the initiatives she’s taking to help people in her state.
• Leon’s been absent from the narrative since DOA3, but I’d like to have him come back. Considering that his entire backstory and motivation revolve around his dead partner’s belief that Leon was the world’s strongest man, it kind of feels shitty if he’s not even participating anymore. I’d like him to be back, but it’s straight-up acknowledged that he has been training like a madman for the last couple years and is now a dark-horse favourite to win the whole thing.

The tournament itself is played out by the bracket so that we can get a clear picture of who participated and won or lost each fight. Participants and brackets in this tournament are:

And here’s how the tournament will play out:

Yup, an Eliot win! The kid’s been training for years and his entire storyline so far has been him uncertain if he’s good enough to complete. Let’s change that! Jann Lee’s on a two-tournament winning streak, and Diego’s the one guy who gave him a challenge last time. They’re clearly the two favourites, so I want them to both lose unexpectedly in the early rounds. This will open up the field for a character like Eliot to make it to the finals. By a similar token, Mila reaches the climax of her current arc by making it to the finals of the tournament against Eliot. Two games earlier, she was giddy and excited to be getting brought into the Dead or Alive community. Now, she’s the second-best amongst them all. Leon also does quite respectably for his big return.

Kokoro’s exit in the 3rd round would mark the continuation of the conspiracy plot, where her and Helena get mixed up with Miyako and Maria. Helena would be overwhelmed by this revelation, but quickly find that her mother’s mind is rapidly leaving her as MIST’s experiments take hold. The ninjas would also become involved at this point to try to thwart MIST’s newest activities. Basically, the story would have Helena have to defeat Maria and put her to rest, while Kokoro discovers that her mother is not a good person, but ultimately saves her life.

Who are the new characters?

So… I know I previously said “Hot DOA MILF, when?”, and Miyako and Maria are seemingly perfect for that… but I don’t really want to make them new staples on the roster. Miyako doesn’t strike me as a fighter if she hasn’t been involved in the past six tournaments already. Plus she doesn’t really approve of Kokoro’s involvement, so it just doesn’t fit the character for me. Maria also doesn’t really make sense as a fighter, but she’ll be the final boss when she turns into a being of pure energy like Alpha-152… so not really “hot DOA MILF” at that point, but she’d be unlockable. Dead or Alive games will typically include two new characters, one male and one female… I don’t really want this article to turn into “look at my OCs!” though, so we’re not going to get too far into the weeds.

Aaaand that about does it for my thoughts on Dead or Alive (for now). That said… I’m approaching 400 blog posts on IC2S… god fucking dammit, I’m going to be buying Venus Vacation Prism for a big, 400th blog post spectacular review, aren’t I…? It just went up for pre-order at the time of writing… God dammit. I legitimately have no interest in the game and hadn’t planned on playing it… but I feel like I have to for the memes once more?

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! For this final entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation. Remember how I said that there was a free to play version of Xtreme 3 on PC which evolved into something else? This is that “something else”. You can still see some of the bones of DOAX3 here (some assets, cutscenes, etc are pulled wholesale from it), but the game plays entirely differently and there has been significantly more content added. Being somewhat active in the DOA fan community, I’ve been aware of this game for a long time, but never had any desire to check it for a variety of reasons out until starting this Love/Hate series. What sorts of changes can we expect from a free-to-play version of Xtreme…? Read on to find out…

Despite being a free-to-play PC exclusive which has only released in Asian territories, there are (somehow) still two releases of Venus Vacation. The main version of the game is available through DMM Game Player, and there’s also a version available on Steam in Asian territories. Despite being the same game, each version has pretty substantial differences in content, with it being said that the Steam version is generally a year behind the DMM version. Confusingly, the game might also be in different languages, depending on where you set your VPN downloaded the game. There might be a version with English translated menus, but I played using a Steam version which was like 99% Japanese, so I was relying on fan guides and general fucking around to figure out what to do. For what it is though, I think I can give a fair opinion about my impressions after spending several hours on the game.

Love

• Graphics – Might as well say it one last time: once again, the graphics for a Dead or Alive game are great. Moreso than any other game in the franchise, Venus Vacation‘s entire appeal revolves around its visuals, so it’s good to see that they nailed this aspect of the experience, since you’re going to be doing a lot of ogling.
• Chibi Avatars!!!!! – One of the first things you see when you start this game is a big booba chibi Honoka bouncing on a volleyball. At first my reaction was “oh Team Ninja, never change”, but it was pretty cute. However, when you get into the game properly, all the girls have a few different chibi arts, and they are adorable. I’m not exaggerating when I say that these were far and away my favourite part of the entire game, to the point where I want to get stickers printed for all the mainline Dead or Alive girls.

Mixed

• Gravure Videos – I’ve always complained that gravure videos are at odds with the design of the Xtreme games. They give you a very limited number of activities that you can complete in a single vacation and only some of these activities give you any incentive (ie, Zack dollars) to complete them. Gravure videos are the worst of all worlds by being barely interactive, short, and providing no incentive other than just letting you ogle the girls for a few seconds. Venus Vacation provides probably the best execution of the idea that I’ve seen thus far though, by making gravure videos unlockable rewards that you get for completing volleyball matches. Turning these into bonus rewards is such an obvious move that I have no idea why they didn’t do this earlier (actually, I do know why: because there’s already barely any content in the other Xtreme games). That said, this goes into mixed simply because it takes FOREVER to unlock them. After five hours of play, I had just unlocked my second gravure video, which is kind of nuts. The only reason I can see for this ridiculous grind is that you would unlock all the videos for all the girls in a week or two if you earned them at a reasonable rate, but that’s not really an excuse, is it? That’s just fucking the customer so you can keep making them run on the content treadmill forever.

Hate

• Region-locked – Okay, at this point, there’s zero reason for Tecmo-Koei to be pulling this bullshit. Why is this only available in Asian markets? This is a free-to-play, digital download only, gatcha game. There’s no physical release that they need to pay up-front for production and distribution world-wide. As far as I can see, they would only need to pay localization costs for whatever regions they release the game in (and this is Tecmo-Koei, so that would just be for the menus, they have never given a shit about localizing the voice acting). And don’t give me shit about the “woke mob” freaking out and censoring the game: no one fucking cares about your titty appreciation game and we all know that this is true, because full-on porn games dominate Steam’s new releases. Venus Vacation isn’t even all that objectionable in terms of content (other than the fact that you can still poke the girls, and they respond negatively, but can’t do anything to stop you and get over it in a matter of seconds). I have a lot of negative thoughts about this game, but I think that there’s no reason why this game can’t be available worldwide. This is 100% on Tecmo-Koei being a bunch of morons.
  • Now, this is just me speculating, but the only justifiable reason I can see for Venus Vacation to be region-locked at this point is possibly a strategic move on Tecmo-Koei’s part. As we’ve seen, the Xtreme games affected Dead or Alive‘s perception in the west. They did not sell very well here, and they had the knock-on effect of making the mainline fighting games sell worse too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tecmo-Koei are trying to manage that perception in case they decide to release another mainline game in the future. Meanwhile, the hardcore gooner audience will import or use a VPN to access the games which had primarily appealed to an eastern audience anyway. Tecmo-Koei still makes their money one way or another and only end up needing to focus on a smaller market in the process.
• Basically No Gameplay – Here’s the biggest difference between Venus Vacation and any other Xtreme game… there’s basically no gameplay. Even Xtreme Beach Volleyball at least had people saying “cum for the boobs, stay for the volleyball”, but you can’t even say that here. Volleyball matches are played out automatically, so you just sit there watching the girls play. You’re basically trapped in DOAX3‘s owner mode the entire time, clicking through menus and watching everyone else getting to have fun. The only real influence you have over the match is getting your girls’ stats up, which is done by dressing them up in swimsuits with a higher rating. It’s the “gear level” bullshit you’ve seen in a thousand live service games, and it’s the entire game here. It makes every match basically pre-determined: you either have higher stats and win, or you have lower stats and lose. Which brings us to…
• The Absolute Worst Games Industry Bullshit – To the surprise of no one, Venus Vacation is a full-on gatcha game, and the entire experience has been warped around that. You play volleyball matches to get crystals, which you then spend to spin the wheel and see if you get a better swimsuit to dress your chosen girl in, so that she can win more games of volleyball. Rinse and repeat. This props up several predatory systems:
  • An energy bar which limits how many matches you can play without waiting for it to recharge (or paying to fill it back up instantly, of course). Energy is ridiculously stingy here: you initially get showered in it, but it very quickly slows to a crawl and lets you play a max of three-to-four matches in a single session before having to wait several hours to recharge.
  • Crystals, which you use to roll for swimsuits. You get showered with them early, but the number you get dry up fast as you go (or, y’know, you can buy more…).
  • Daily and weekly challenges and login bonuses to keep you on the grind treadmill and to encourage turning the game into a habitual activity.
  • Blatantly overpowered swimsuits with awful drop rates in the low single-digit percentile. Power creep which has rendered older suits worthless, meaning that you have to bee-line the newest events and get their SSR suits in order to stay competitive.
  • This is just the stuff I came across in my time playing, I’m sure there’s even more bullshit in play that I just never got a chance to interact with (and I know I got the “use your credit card to buy this digital currency!” pop-up more times than I can list). As a result of all this, you might notice that…
• It’s Not About Having Fun, It’s About Compulsion – Like so many shitty fucking games of the last decade and a half, Venus Vacation isn’t a game about having fun, it’s a game that tries to get you addicted to its systems to get you paying money. Let me illustrate how ridiculous this gets here: you can fast-forward through the volleyball matches. Yes, the entire point of the previous games is just an obstacle to completing the grind for more gatcha spins, so you can (and will) skip as much as you can to avoid wasting more time. As bad as that is, then there’s the swimsuits. You’re gonna spin the wheel over and over again, getting swimsuits which are aesthetically pleasing, but completely worthless because they are not an SSR pull. If you play the game long enough, you just save up as many crystals as you can, because everything you can do is worthless outside of special events which drop the new SSR suits. You can’t even enjoy dressing your girls up in whatever suits you like most, because the gear-grind means that they’ve syphoned the fun out of goddamn dress-up. The worst part? I can feel the fucking hooks in me while playing. I wasn’t playing because I was enjoying myself. I was actively bored and getting more and more pissed off at the predatory systems in the game. And yet, I kept playing and skipping through everything, because I had a bunch of energy and didn’t want to waste it, because then I’d get less spins and have less chances to get a good suit. Again, none of this was designed to make you enjoy the game, it has been refined and engineered to make you keep playing. I fucking loathe this kind of design, so Venus Vacation would already be on my shit-list, but it gets an extra twist of the knife in, because…
• This Isn’t Even Dead or Alive Anymore – There’s a lot of discontent in the Dead or Alive fan community towards Venus Vacation, because the mainline series has been basically abandoned in favour of this game:
  • For one thing, after all the content which has been added, Venus Vacation doesn’t even feel like it’s a Dead or Alive game anymore. All the attention from Team Ninja has gone into original characters, to the point where there are eleven girls from the mainline games, versus twenty original characters. This gets worse when you consider that there are multiple, major characters from the mainline games still missing from the roster here (most notably, Lisa and Christie, although it’s also pretty bad that Mila is missing too… NiCO and Rachel, I care less about). That said… most of the new characters just do not interest me in the slightest. Their designs can largely be boiled down to anime tropes and/or fetish bait and, without a story campaign to really explore their character, we don’t get a whole lot of personality to explore.
  • Making matters worse is the pure numbers here. Xtreme games have always been pretty cheap, utilizing the same, OG Xbox-era design with little in the way of improvement or ambition. Compare that to Dead or Alive 5 and 6, which clearly cost a lot of money to make and were actually aiming for a global market, meaning they had much higher distribution costs. From a purely-financial standpoint, can you blame Team Ninja for prioritizing this game over a much riskier mainline entry? No, but from the perspective of a fan of the franchise, it’s frankly disgusting that we’re probably not getting a new, mainline Dead or Alive game any time soon, all because this predatory game prints money at a fraction of the cost. Hell, I have my problems with the Xtreme games in general, but at least they succeeded at being very relaxing, chill experiences with enough gameplay to keep you entertained in short burst. Venus Vacation strips that all out in the name of squeezing money from you.

Frankly, I despise Venus Vacation. That’s mostly due to it representing the absolute worst of the modern gaming industry, but the fact that it has fucked the mainline Dead or Alive games just makes it all the more insulting (and just illustrates further how shit the games industry is in general). And, to illustrate this further, we recently got the announcement of Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme, a new game which is going to be a dating sim (oh yay, my favourite part about Xtreme)… and, as of the time of this writing, it’s looking very likely that none of the mainline girls are going to be in the game at all (edit: as expected, Honoka was the only character from the fighting games that made the cast, but she’s arguably more of an Xtreme character anyway). It’s also quite telling that “Venus Vacation” is getting top billing here – this is basically its own little franchise now. As a fan of Dead or Alive, I hate that this is where we’re at now. Through the course of this Love/Hate series, I genuinely came to love this world, its characters, and their relationships. It’s fucking trash, but it’s my trash, goddammit. Seeing it shunted away due to financial considerations is heart-breaking.

Man… I was not expecting this to make me so depressed. Fuck… can you cheer me up, Chibi Hitomi?

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. For my 200th Blog Post celebration, I reviewed this game for the memes. I was pretty low on it at the time… and yet, this has been the one cartridge in my PS Vita for several years now. Have my thoughts changed then…? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 has got to have the most confusing set of re-releases in the entire franchise (which is saying something). For one thing, there’s no game just called “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3“. The initial two games were subtitled Fortune (on PS4) and Venus (on PS Vita). An free-to-play PC version would be released shortly thereafter, but that ended up evolving into a completely different game, so I’ll cover it later. However, some content from the PC version ended up being incorporated into a re-released version called Scarlet, which would release on PS4 and Switch. However, even this re-release wasn’t identical, because the PS4 version had some censorship (to the point where things which were in Fortune ended up being removed in the re-release), whereas the Switch version is fully unchanged. As a result, the Switch version is easily the definitive version in terms of content, and also for being handheld (as previously stated, Xtreme games play best on portable systems). For my part, I bought Venus for my 200th blog post special, and I still own it to this day. While not as “definitive” as Scarlet, it’s still a very worthy way to check this game out if you’re interested (and, honestly, there’s very little changed between the two versions). That said, I did try out the Switch version of Scarlet as well for reference for this Love/Hate series.

Love

• Graphics – Good graphics are par for the course for Dead or Alive, but it’s especially worth noting in an Xtreme game where you’re meant to be lustfully staring at the character models for a hefty chunk of the runtime. The new art style from DOA5 really works in this regard, leaving a lot less to the imagination compared to its more stylized predecessors. The PS Vita and Switch ports are especially impressive in this regard, holding up flawlessly compared to their console counterparts.
• The Ultimate Handheld Experience – This only really applies to the PS Vita and Switch versions of the game, but the more laid-back handheld experience really does make this the best way to play any Xtreme game. The technology has advanced far enough that the compromises of Paradise are no longer a mitigating factor; this is a fully-featured version of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. Being able to play in short bursts also really helps keep the game relaxing and cuts down on any tedium from the limited number of activities available. While I have my issues with the game, by virtue of being on a handheld, this makes DOAX3 probably the best way to experience an Xtreme game that we’ve ever gotten.

Mixed

• Missions – One of the new features of DOAX3 is a mission structure. These are basically what you’d expect from a game released in the last ten years: a little pop-up that says “perform X task to get a reward”. These can be an easy way to get a small amount of Zack dollars and gives you something to work towards. I didn’t really give them much notice at the time, but we’ve been so inundated with daily/weekly challenges in games that I kind of hate it now. The tasks are so arbitrary, some are way more trouble than they’re worth, and they ultimately don’t make the game more fun: you’re just doing some chore because the game told you to in order to get a tiny dopamine hit, instead of enjoying your vacation by doing what you want to. Look… the issue with previous Xtreme games wasn’t that there was no direction, it was that the content on offer was way too thin and shallow. Constantly prodding me to do things isn’t content, it’s just preying on people addicted to checking off boxes.

Hate

• Owner Mode – The big, marquee new feature of DOAX3 is owner mode. This mode allows you to… oh goddammit. It’s a full-fledged, goddamn dating sim mode. Given how much I hated the dating sim elements in the previous Xtreme games, you can imagine my feelings about owner mode. It plays out as a second layer for the main game, with your own inventory and money, and you can even switch between girl mode and owner mode on the fly. The main difference is that owner mode doesn’t allow you to play as any particular girl, so you can only really sit and watch everyone else vacationing, while managing their happiness with gifts and trying to get the girls to try on skimpier swimsuits. There’s not a whole lot to it to be honest, and it’s about as dull and tedious as the dating sim elements from the previous games. About the only thing it adds to the formula is that the girls are now doting on you, the player, instead of having fun interacting with the other girls the whole time, but that opens up some issues…
• Envelope Pushing – Look, by this point in the franchise, Dead or Alive is no stranger to racy content. Frankly, as much as I may roll my eyes at some of this stuff, none of it has been truly objectionable up to this point (other than the sexualization of minors in the first few entries, because Japan). DOAX3 has about as much sexuality as you’d expect, but it pushes the boundaries of taste moreso than any other game in the franchise thus far, to the point where even I have to admit that it gets downright creepy:
  • Sure, all the girls are officially over eighteen now, hooray. However, this is also the proper debut of Marie Rose, who initially appears to buck DOA design trends by having a very slight figure. However, this seems less of a character diversity decision, and more that she’s clearly been designed to appeal to lolita fetishists. There’s also her foil, Honoka, who is also designed to look like a schoolgirl, while also having the biggest knockers in the entire franchise, and the contrast between the two characters is clearly intentional.
  • In their efforts to play up the dev’s lascivious fantasies, the game can turn into a sexual harassment/assault simulator. If you give a girl a new swimsuit, she can choose to try it on in front of you if you agree to close your eyes. The game then gives you the option to peek, which causes the girl to freak out and cover herself up (there’s no nudity regardless, but it’s clearly about the voyeurism and humiliation fantasy). There’s no real incentive to do it… but, then again, there’s no in-game incentive not to do it (other than affecting their happiness), and the devs have clearly put it in there to be used. Same goes for the VR mode. Now, I do not have a PS VR, so I can’t verify this myself, but the VR mode allows you to poke and prod the girls and cause them to get audibly uncomfortable. However, no matter how far you go and how much they say “No!”, they’ll get over it and be back to doting on you soon enough. Team Ninja, I implore you: consent is fucking hot. There’s nothing hotter than an experienced woman who wants to ride your dick to oblivion because she’s obsessed with you. This game portrays its girls as a bunch of naïve, innocent angels who don’t realize how hot they are, and then allows you to take advantage of them. It makes everything feel way creepier than it needs to, all because it might appeal more to some degenerates.
• More Games Industry Bullshit – To the surprise of no one, DOAX3 continues the games industry bullshit that really started in DOA5, only this time it’s more predatory. Sure, there’s less DLC overall here, but the way that DOAX3 goes about it is more objectionable. Swimsuits can be bought with real-money premium tickets. There’s a swimsuit shop with random suits which rotates items daily, so you’re pressured into buying what you want now, because you don’t know when it will be back. Oh, and missions often will require you to buy a particular swimsuit from the owner shop, which further pushes you to make a purchase now, because the suit may not be there if you wait to grind some in-game currency first. Several swimsuits are also premium-only and it can cost $10 Canadian or more to purchase a single one, which is egregious, even compared to DOA5.
• Missing Characters – For the first time in an Xtreme game, there are female characters from the main cast missing from this game. These aren’t minor characters missing either: we’re talking Leifang, Tina, Christie, Lisa, and Mila. This is especially baffling for Tina and Christie, who are the most sexually-liberal characters in the franchise, and for Lisa, who was literally introduced in the original DOAXBV. Given that Marie Rose and Honoka take center stage in this game’s marketing, you can’t help but feel like more “important” DOA characters got bumped off the cast for either being too “old” (early-to-mid 20s for Tina and Christie? Not in my masturbation-fantasy, thank you very much!), or because racism (…c’mon, we all know that’s a big factor in why Lisa, the only black woman in the franchise, isn’t here. Even if you wanna say “well the game was released in Asia only and they don’t have black people there!”… that’s still racism, my dude, sorry to break it to you).
• Culture War Bullshit – To the outrage of fans, DOAX3 was never released outside of Asian territories. An official explanation wasn’t really elaborated on, but there are a few prominent theories:
  • Amongst dumbasses, the narrative is that SJWs (which is what they called “woke” at the time) whined too much and caused Tecmo-Koei to prevent the game from being released worldwide. While there were some game journalists reporting on the game at the time, generally people just didn’t give a shit about Dead or Alive anymore by the time this game released. That, and the game was announced to be an Asia-only release before any theoretical outrage could happen anyway.
  • According to Team Ninja themselves, the reasoning seems to boil down to “western retailers would not stock the game“. That was a pretty claim dubious at the time (you’re telling me that they couldn’t do a digital-only release at least to get some more money…?), but I can kind of understand it. I can see a big retailer like Walmart refusing to carry the game… but that’s because Team Ninja have spent so much effort marketing the Xtreme games as porn that of course Walmart doesn’t want to deal with Karen getting mad that Little Timmy was exposed to big booba from the box art he saw at the store.
  • The truth of the matter, as far as I’m concerned? Dead or Alive Xtreme games have never sold particularly well in the west. Manufacturing and distributing all the discs required for an international release is not going to have the kind of return on investment that Tecmo-Koei need to justify an international release. It’s ultimately more sensible for them to release it in Asia, drum up some controversy, and then have interested gamers import it. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we found out that Tecmo-Koei had some sort of deal with PlayAsia to split on the added import fees.
• No Innovation – When it comes down to it, this is still the exact same game we got on the original Xbox thirteen years earlier, just with a couple more features awkwardly bolted on. We’re still going on a fourteen day vacation with a morning/afternoon/evening/night activity cycle and doing the same activities that we did in the last game (less, actually, since marine race and water slide are still missing). The menus are basically identical. Art assets and animations have been reused wholesale. I complained about it at the time, but it still holds true: DOAX3 is the sort of game that would actually benefit from being open world and letting you actually explore a little bit instead of being on a strictly scheduled timeframe. But, of course, that would cost money to implement, and there’s no way Tecmo-Koei were going to greenlight that. So, instead, we basically just get more of the same, but in a prettier package.

For the most part, my original review of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 holds true today. However, when I wrote that review, I underestimated just how compelling the “relaxing” part of the game was. It was so easy to destress by firing the game up for a twenty-or-thirty minute fantasy vacation. As a result, a lot of the game’s most serious faults are mitigated, while its qualities are enhanced. That said, the game is still definitely very niche and not particularly good, but I don’t want that to come across like I think the game is irredeemable garbage. It’s fine to find some enjoyment in something that is imperfect.

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive 5. This was my first DOA game: having played all the Ninja Gaiden games on PS Vita, I decided to check out this game’s Vita port since Ryu Hayabusa was also in it. And thus, this whole journey and obsession with this franchise began… I recall enjoying it at the time, but it has been probably around eight years since I last played it.

First off, a bit of history is worth mentioning before we get into the Love/Hate properly. Dead or Alive 5 represents something of an identity crisis for Team Ninja. Long-time studio leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, left Team Ninja and the series’ Xbox exclusivity ended with the franchise in a shaky position. Dead or Alive needed to figure out its place in the gaming market and evolve if it was going to stay viable. Could they pull together and accomplish this? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive 5 has a lot of different releases: the game originally released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and then they released Dead or Alive 5+ on PS Vita. Then there was an Ultimate version which was released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and finally Last Round, which released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC (although the PC port was actually based on the last-gen versions, so it doesn’t look quite as good). I had Last Round on PS4, although I apparently sold my copy at some point years ago. As a result, for this replay I used the PS Vita version, but between the PS4 version and the PC port (which I have tried out), I can say that they all play pretty similarly, with each re-release primarily adding more content.

Love

• Story Mode – I’ve been pretty harsh on Dead or Alive games’ stories throughout this Love/Hate series, but that’s largely down to them being really dumb, or poorly told (or both). Dead or Alive 5 tries to modernize the series to match the sort of cinematic, western-led experiences we were getting in the late PS3/Xbox 360-era. The result is a story mode which dispenses with the “pick a fighter, play through a few matches with the occasional cutscene in-between, fight a boss, get a unique, character-specific ending when you’re done” structure and instead follows a more expansive, linear narrative that covers the entire cast by the end. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the old structure well enough, and Dead or Alive 5‘s narrative is still dumb, but I really like how this game presents its story and world. For the first time in the series’ history, we get to see how all these characters live, interact with each other, and the world that they inhabit. We get to see them interacting casually, like there’s this tight-knit community of Dead or Alive tournament fighters who stay in touch with each other and seek out new contenders to bring into the fold. The linear structure also helps the tournament to not feel completely superfluous: more than half of the narrative is dominated by the tournament, so we have some actual stakes and escalation and we excitedly wait and see who the winners and losers are. Then the last third of the narrative concerns the on-going DOATEC conspiracy narrative, providing a fitting conclusion for the game. I can see some people getting pissed off that they undid the climactic events of Dead or Alive 4 here, but I didn’t mind too much. I thoroughly enjoyed Dead or Alive 5‘s story campaign, it was nice to see a more cinematic take on these characters and this world and it helped me appreciate them all the more for it.
• The Characters (New and Old!) – Springing off of the last point, the more fleshed out story mode means that we also get more layers to all of the characters than we have been able to get up to this point.
  • Starting with the existing characters, I want to give a special shout-out to Eliot. I didn’t really care about him in Dead or Alive 4, but here I found him very endearing. As one of the younger cast members, he is insecure about his abilities, eager to learn from others (including a fun pairing with Brad Wong), and constantly training to become the best. There’s also a rather cute scene where he is crushing hard on Christie (poor boy, she would annihilate you), but is too inexperienced to know what to do about it. It’s refreshing, because we rarely see anyone (other than Zack) acknowledge how hot the characters of these games are, so it gives him some humanizing in the process. Bayman also gets some much-needed characterization. He was always such a boring, generic strong-guy mercenary character in the previous games, but here we get to see him as a consummate professional, a soldier, and a leader who tries to keep his comrades safe. It’s not a massive leap, but it’s enough to at least make him more interesting.
  • Of the new characters, by far the best is Mila. She’s just great all-round: she’s an employee at a diner whose hobby is MMA, which causes her to catch the eye of the Dead or Alive fighter community. She’s a big fangirl for Bass Armstrong, and it’s very cute getting to see her freaking out about getting close to these characters she’s idolized for years now. She also just has a cool, down-to-earth design, and plays well to boot.
  • I also have to shout-out some pretty major guest and DLC characters for this game. We’ve got four characters from Virtua Fighter (Akira Yuki, Sarah Bryant, Jacky Bryant, and Pai Chan), some of whom actually make cameos in the story mode. DLC/re-releases would eventually bring in Ninja Gaiden characters Rachel and Momiji (who is a god-tier DOA waifu), as well as King of Fighters‘ Mai Shiranui, and even Naotora Ii from Samurai Warriors. Some other major characters were added via DLC, but I’m going to hold off on mentioning them further until the next couple games where they got their proper introductions…
• New Art Style – The anime-like aesthetic from the first four games served them well and has helped those games still look pretty impressive today, but it was reaching its limits by the time of DOA4. A full visual overhaul was implemented for DOA5, adopting a more detailed and realistic art style, although it does maintain some more subtle stylization. All-in-all, I quite like the change, although the colours are a bit washed out (this was pretty typical of games of the era, and would get a lot more saturation in subsequent entries). It’s not going to have quite the same staying power as the earlier games’ style, but it was easily the best-looking 3D fighter of its era and still holds up today.

Mixed

• More Overt Sexual Content – In the wake of Dead or Alive 4 and Xtreme 2, I think that Team Ninja had a sit-down where they were trying to figure out the future for the franchise. Xtreme 2 sold very poorly in the west, and there was clearly a sense that they needed to appeal more to western gamers with the new art style, full English voice acting, cinematic production values, etc. Hell, they literally made the tagline for this game “I’m a fighter”, as if to remind you that this game isn’t just about hot women in skimpy outfits. In spite of this, Team Ninja continued pushing the Xtreme aspects further into the mainline games:
  • The main example of this is that every fight ends with you being able to control the camera as you focus in on whatever parts of your fighter you want, for as long as you want, whether they’re in a victorious win condition, or an exhausted and vulnerable crumple on the ground… which, I shouldn’t need to clarify, is clearly intended to invoke some rather lascivious fantasies…
  • Whatever the original intent for DOA5 was, they would lean harder into the suggestive aspects as the game went on: not only did we get hundreds of swimsuits and various other lewd costumes, but they also introduced full-on gravure videos straight out of the Xtreme games.
  • One indication of how focused this game is on pushing sex over its predecessors is what I call “breast inflation”. For four games, Tina had the biggest rack, and it kind of legitimately made sense for her character: she’s the ideal, hot, wild, freedom-loving American girl and, as a professional wrestler, it actually made sense for her to have some of the more revealing outfits in the series. However, come DOA5, we got not one, but two characters with bigger boobs than her. One was Rachel from Ninja Gaiden, which you could argue was just Team Ninja following that character’s established look. However, brand new DLC character Honoka doesn’t really have an excuse: she’s a school girl with boobs so big that you could suffocate between them. She’s clearly intended to be fetish bait, something that Team Ninja would continue indulging going forward…
  • One big positive I’ll say for this game’s sexual content though: at least everyone in the cast is of-age now!
  • By the way, that’s not to say that any of this sexual/suggestive content is bad, per se. However, this was my first DOA game: I had no idea that, only a couple games earlier, the sexy stuff was all in the marketing and the games themselves were focused on the fighting. The Xtreme-ification of the mainline entries only accelerated the notion that these games were made for “gamer weirdos”, furthered the punch-line that this series was not to be taken seriously, and made it so that these elements could not be separated or toned down without provoking backlash. If Xtreme had never happened and the games didn’t push the envelope each time, I doubt that the series would have declined as badly as it did. It’s unfortunate that that’s the case, but that’s just the reality of marketing a game to the sexually-conservative western audience.

Hate

• DLC Overload – Dead or Alive 5‘s DLC model really set the tone for the kind of bullshit which has infected the fighting game genre in the past couple generations. I get that it’s all cosmetic stuff, but it’s still scummy for several reasons:
  • First of all, the price of these sets is simply ludicrous. This game had seven season passes during its lifetime, each of which cost more than the entire game itself. For costumes! Just looking at Steam, where I know for a fact that some items have been removed, all DLC for this game currently totals up to a whopping $1,184.68 (Canadian)!!! That is, frankly, a ridiculous price to charge to get the “full” Dead or Alive 5 experience. Like… what experience can they possibly offer which is worth the price of fourteen full-priced AAA games!?
  • Secondly, it’s not exactly subtle that Team Ninja are monetizing the gooners in the audience. Most of the DLC packs are for swimsuits and other skimpy outfits, and there are also some DLCs for “private paradise” scenes (literally just the characters frolicking in the sand for like thirty seconds). It’s not an exaggeration to say that the horniness of the audience is being exploited here for a dirty buck (especially when the in-game unlockable outfits are far tamer in comparison to the stuff you have to pay for).
  • Thirdly, I feel like I really have to reiterate just how much DLC there is for this game, to the point where it’s straight-up confusing to navigate. The DOA wiki tells me that, just for Last Round, there were at least 952 costumes for sale across 43 costume bundle packs, some of which were included in the seven season passes, and some of which were not. I get that this was their way of monetizing the game and continuing to justify supporting the series, but it sets an awful precedent for the franchise: you’re producing a cosmetic cash shop with a fighting game stapled onto it, and every subsequent release needs to escalate this until the entire edifice implodes in on itself and the fighting game part becomes unviable to continue. Given how the series has advanced since DOA5, my fears at the time were well-founded…
• Core Fighters Is a Scam – Oh and exacerbating all the DLC issues is the Core Fighters release of the game. In theory, it sounds like a good idea: release a free-to-play version of the game where you can just pay to get the parts you want. Of course, like every other “only pay for what you want!” service, it ends up being a massive scam where you pay significantly more for everything in the end. Everything that could be monetized here is, including freaking stage music. Tecmo-Koei seem to have been pleased with the results though, because Core Fighters is the only way to get Dead or Alive 5: Last Round digitally now (you have to buy a bundle to get all the “base game” content, but it doesn’t make navigating everything less of a headache, and the fact that it’s an extra step to pull it off clearly shows that they don’t intend for you to take this route).
• Rig – Unfortunately, the other new character introduced in Dead or Alive 5 is Rig, who is one of the dullest characters imaginable. He very clearly is intended to “appeal to western audiences”, which is probably why his face looks identical to Jake Mueller from Resident Evil 6. He’s got a mysterious past, his own unique fighting style he developed, and he is literally named after the oil rig he works at and has spent his entire life on. Oh, and for some reason, he ends up being the big bad of the game with zero warning. Wow, so much information for me to latch onto. Is it any wonder that the female characters are the most popular in these games when the male characters get this much to work with?

Dead or Alive 5 is a pretty good time. I love the change in production values and how it makes this world and characters so much more believable. However, the ways in which it transformed the series into a DLC-factory sucked at the time of release, and have proven to be even worse than we imagined in hindsight. It’s unfortunate that that leaves a stain on this game’s legacy, because it’s otherwise a pretty great reimagining of the series’ formula.

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be taking another detour, this time to the 3DS with Dead or Alive: Dimensions. This is a weird little spin-off for a number of reasons: at the time, Team Ninja had worked with Nintendo on Metroid: Other M and they ultimately decided to team up for an early 3DS Dead or Alive project. Given Nintendo and their handhelds’ child-friendly reputation, contrasted with DOA‘s smutty reputation by this point, it was a bizarre team-up. And, on top of that, Dimensions would be a pretty ambitious title, retelling the events of all four mainline games that had been released at the time and featuring the largest character roster in franchise history. All-in-all, it made for a pretty interesting project, one which seemed particularly unexpected for Nintendo’s newest handheld system. Could Team Ninja pull off this weird combination and produce something worthwhile? Read on to find out…

Once again, Dimensions has only had one release, that being on the 3DS. And, unlike a lot of the games in this series, I actually have a physical copy of the game, which I picked up at an EB Games for like $15 years ago (legitimately can’t remember exactly when, but likely 6-10 years ago). Despite that, I somehow never actually got around to playing this game, so it’s been sitting around on a shelf this whole time. This Love/Hate series has presented a great excuse to dust off my 3DS and finally get a chance to try it out. Just one more reason why I took this dive into the franchise’s history!

Love

• Full DOA Experience on 3DS – The main reason I never played Dimensions until now was because I figured there was no way that Team Ninja could accurately bring a Dead or Alive game to an underpowered Nintendo handheld and actually make it play well. Credit where credit’s due, they really proved me wrong on both fronts. The 3DS circle pad works surprisingly well, I didn’t find myself wishing for a controller in my hand even once. It’s got all the game modes you’d expect. Hell, even the graphics are solid – at this point in the series’ history, this would have been the best-looking Dead or Alive game, hands-down. Even today, this is a surprisingly good-looking game.
• Tag Challenge – Dimensions‘ take on tag team mode is tag challenge, which is basically a series of challenge matches that escalate in difficulty as you go. I’ll always play a few tag team matches in any DOA game I try, because I find it the funnest way to play the game. Tag challenge really drew me in though, far more than any other tag mode has. Turning each match into a challenge lends so much more weight to the experience. Tag challenge sounds pretty unfair: you’ll be having a 2v1 against an AI opponent and can get knocked out as many of five times in a match before failing. However, the difficulty ramps quickly, and your opponents are going to have more health and do more damage than you, so you have to manage your tags strategically. If there’s one thing I’m a bit mixed on though, it’s the AI partner. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone who can switch in to give you a breather. However, as you reach the highest difficulty challenges, the enemy AI far outpaces them, to the point where your partner’s HP drops precipitously while landing no hits in return. At that point, I’d probably rather be controlling them myself, because they become a major liability.

Mixed

• Chronicle Mode – Easily the most enticing feature of Dimensions for longtime fans, chronicle mode retells and recontextualizes the stories of the four mainline Dead or Alive games into one epic narrative. This is particularly cool, because the stories of those games were told so poorly, so getting to see them fleshed out could be a love-letter to the fans. However, I will give the first couple Dead or Alive games’ stories credit for one thing: they left a lot of gaps, so you got to use your imagination to piece them together and make them make sense. Dimensions fleshes out the narrative of Dead or Alive quite a bit, but in doing so, it really highlights just how dumb the stories of these games are. This is made worse because, for all the extra plot and context they’ve added in, this story is still not very well-told and it can feel like a jumbled mess with several gaps in narrative and logic. It also doesn’t help that the Dead or Alive tournament itself is extremely unimportant to the plot. The narrative advances with each tournament, but the actual main plot involves DOATEC conducting experiments on the ninja characters and so only a handful of characters have any real importance, while the rest are relegated to the relatively worthless tournament plot. I think it’s fun to play through this game to see a “grander” retelling of the series’ narrative, but I legitimately think that playing through each game in the franchise is a far more satisfying way to experience their stories.
  • Even with all this said, I probably would be on-board with chronicle mode as an abridged version of the series’ plot. However, there are two big retcons here which really move this into “mixed” territory for me. First of all is that Team Ninja have really pushed Ryu Hayabusa to the forefront. This would have released at the height of Ninja Gaiden‘s popularity, so I can understand why this was done. However, having him step in and boss around the other characters and steal their glory makes this come across as Ryu fanfiction rather than something earned. This leads me to my second major complaint, that they absolutely fucked the narrative of Dead or Alive 3. It goes from “Ayane defies her clan and family in order to give her adopted father an honourable death, making her grow into an adult in the process” to “the Ryu Hayabusa and Hayate show, ft. Ayane”. It’s executed so much worse and is legitimately insulting if you’ve ever played through DOA3.
• Touchpad Features – The 3DS’s second screen is implemented… interestingly in Dimensions. It houses the move list, showing you what inputs you need to do in order to pull off a combo, and occasionally will display quick, context-sensitive actions. What makes this interesting is that you can tap on a combo and then your character will perform that combo automatically. It’s a pretty cool feature for showing what moves are available to you and can help you pull off an awesome move you would have struggled to land in the heat of the moment. However, this feature is pretty limited, because you have dozens of moves available, but only a tiny handful are shown on screen at one time, meaning that it’s only really useful for keeping one favourite combo on speed-dial. It would be cool if you could play a tap-moves-only playthrough, but that’s just not feasible here.

Hate

• 3D – The implementation of 3D in this game suuuuuucks. Honestly, this is probably more of a 3DS issue than it is a Dimensions issue, but they did choose to lean into it, so I feel it’s fair to criticize. I had to turn off the 3D almost immediately, because looking at it gives me a headache. It’s also kind of dumb that any photos you take in showcase mode only appear in 3D if you had the 3DS slider on on the console at the time… holy crap, why? I legitimately don’t understand how the game can display an image in 3D and then only be able to display that same image in 2D because of some settings toggle when you took the photo.

Dead or Alive: Dimensions is fun. I really was not expecting the game to play as well as it did, and was thoroughly pleased throughout my playthrough. Gripes about retcons aside, chronicle mode is also pretty cool and worth playing through at least once to get a more straight-forward overview of the series’ narrative. I’m glad that I finally took the plunge and got to check this game out, it’s well worth a look if you have a 3DS.

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’re covering Dead or Alive Paradise. So, confession time: I was originally planning on covering Xtreme 2 next, and would just off-handedly mention Paradise there since it’s basically a trimmed-down port of Xtreme 2. However… I sold my Xbox 360 years ago and it turns out that the current Xbox 360 emulation scene is pretty poor, so I can’t get Xtreme 2 running on my computer. During the writing of these articles, I did end up buying an Xbox One on the cheap just to play Dead or Alive 4 and a handful other Xbox exclusives, but Xtreme 2 is not backwards compatible, so I straight-up cannot play the game at all. As a result, that leaves us with Paradise to fill in this entry. Paradise is a PSP Xtreme game and is notable for being the first time Dead or Alive made the leap to a handheld console. How would this change affect the gameplay? Read on to find out…

Love

• The Handheld Experience – The DOA Xtreme games have always struck me as being ill-suited for full console releases. Aside from having to explain to your friends and family what you’re doing when they catch you playing one of these games on your living room TV, the limited and repetitive content do not incentivize long play times, which is going to make it harder to justify getting the game started, loaded, and running when you’re probably turning it off again in about half an hour. In this regard, experimenting with Paradise on a handheld was kind of a genius idea. Play whenever and where ever you want, when it starts getting boring put it into sleep mode, come back when you’re in the mood. For a breezy game like this, it’s pretty much the perfect way to play.
• Photo Mode – The biggest new addition to Dead or Alive Paradise is the ability to take photos of the girls while playing. This definitely heightens the voyeuristic aspect of the previous game and, honestly, is a pretty cool feature. We all love photo modes in modern games and this is the sort of game that seems purpose-built for it.

Mixed

• Rio – The only other new thing Paradise brings to the fold is Rio, a blackjack dealer who you can unlock as a bonus girl. Unfortunately, everything about her is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s nice that we get another girl added to the roster. On the other hand, her design just doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the cast and she stands out like a sore thumb as a result. On the one hand, it’s good that they have actually given her an animated model in the casino you can ogle when you choose to play against her. On the other hand, she’s the only in-game model in the casino and it just hammers home how fucking half-assed these games are. Would it fucking kill them to let us be able to see the girls we’re playing against instead of a static profile bubble showing their heads (aka, the lowest-effort solution possible)?

Hate

• PSP Hardware Ill-Suited For This Game – So… as good an idea as a handheld DOAX game is, the PSP was not the right system for the job. PSP games are basically running on hardware somewhere between the PS1 and PS2, so you can imagine that it really struggles to provide the kind of graphical fidelity that a game like this requires to be in any way arousing.
• Limited Content – Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 introduced several new mini-games to its vacation simulation, but even then, it struggled to hold any interest on a second go-around and suffered much worse reviews as a result. With that in mind, it is pretty disappointing to see Paradise actually remove three game modes (pool slide, marine race, and tug of war), presumably because the PSP just couldn’t handle them. While there are many more swimsuits to purchase and unlock compared to the original game, the lack of additional mini-games really hurts Paradise and makes it feel about as content-bereft as the original DOAXBV. This goes doubly so, because…
• The Grind – In DOAXBV, you could choose to grind if you wanted every girl to have every swimsuit available. It would take a while, but it was entirely optional and you could just as easily just play as your favourite girl(s) and buy whatever swimsuits suited your fancy. Not so in Paradise. More swimsuits means more to buy and some of the new additions are expensive. There are also more girls in this game, so that means more girls with exclusive suits that you need to manage to try to get anything specific. Oh, but the worst part of all this? Two of the mini-games are locked behind watching gravure videos of the girls relaxing. That might not sound too bad, but you’re underestimating Team Ninja’s willingness to make you grind for basic features: you have to watch fifty and one hundred unique gravure clips in order to unlock these two modes. To put that in perspective, if you spent an entire vacation watching nothing but gravure clips, you’d only have fourty-two watched at the end of it (and, since these clips need to be unique, you’re going to have to cycle through several girls over several vacations to achieve this). It seems pretty clear to me that you’re intended to casually play through as all the girls once, playing volleyball and trading swimsuits between them and then unlocking each game mode to give you a bit more to do on subsequent runs. This already sounds repetitive as all hell, but then we have to take into account that these two mini-games kind of suck. Worst of all is beach flags, a fucking awful button masher game that lasts like ten seconds each time (just like your mom). Then there’s butt battle, which is at least kind of funny in a juvenile way, but it’s also basically designed to be the dullest fighting game ever made. Oh, and then there’s the apex of this game’s salacious content, the pole dancing sequences. In order to unlock these, you need to have viewed every single gravure video for each girl, unlock a special slot machine, and then get lucky enough to get the jackpot on it, at which point you’ll get a special ticket to watch the pole dance. The sheer grind this game asks of you to get one moderately sexy sequence that you could watch on goddamn Youtube for a fraction of the effort is just mind-boggling. Why do developers of “sexy” games like this always put several barriers of bullshit between you and all the content they’re trying to arouse you with?
• Dating Sim Elements Are Even More Tedious – So I already hated the dating sim elements of the original DOAXBV, but they added another layer of bullshit to the system between then and Paradise. Now you need to memorize what colour of wrapping paper a girl likes in order for her to accept anything. What realistic and deep gameplay systems this game has! It retroactively makes me appreciate that, for all its problems, the original game didn’t fuck around with menial bullshit like this.
• The Boob Physics – OH MY GOD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE BREAST PHYSICS IN THIS GAME!? I’m not exaggerating here when I say that the breast physics in Paradise are on-par with the psychotic slinkies we saw in the original Dead or Alive. They bounce all over the place like fucking springs on meth. I like it when my video game boobs remind me of real boobs, not a plate of gelatin in an earthquake. This is not sexy, it’s fucking stupid. It’s legitimately bad enough here that I find myself asking if this is the result of some setting I screwed up without realizing it? Is it a fault with the emulation…..? It legitimately feels wrong. Like, I maxed out the boob physics in the other games just to see how ridiculous they could get, but nothing has looked this bad on the boob-front since the PS1 era.

Dead or Alive Paradise (and Xtreme 2 by extension) are a lesson in how more isn’t always better. Xtreme Beach Volleyball was content-bereft, sure, but it also gave that game a certain amount of focus that made it easy to just relax. Paradise is so thin on stuff to do and requires so much grinding to get to any of its content that it just makes the whole thing feel like a chore. Add in that it’s on hardware which is ill-suited to the experience, and Paradise is the first game in the franchise that I’ve looked at so far which is just straight-up not worth bothering with.

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive 4. This was the first Dead or Alive game following Xtreme Beach Volleyball, and was the first mainline entry to get an M-rating. Was this deserved? And how would the perception of Xtreme alter the series going forward? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive 4 is another entry which only had one release, this time on the Xbox 360 shortly after the console’s launch. I actually snagged a copy just for this Love/Hate series!

Love

• Stages – While the stage hazards are a major come-down from Dead or Alive 3, 4‘s stages still show a lot of creativity and character. You’ve got a stage where you fight in the streets of Las Vegas and have to avoid traffic (or push your opponent into it to get some massive damage; I’ve had multiple matches end with one, or even both, fighters getting run over and it’s always hilarious when it happens). There’s a stage in a crowded market where you can smash through stalls, or fall down to a beach and continue the fight there. There’s a cool stage in the savannahs of Africa, with all sorts of wildlife roaming about. There’s a fight on the steps of a mountain temple with monkeys running around and a tomb at the base if you fall down enough sets of stairs. There’s a freaking dinosaur stage, with lots of smaller dinosaurs moving around inside the combat area as obstacles. There’s just lots of creativity on display, which helps make every fight unique, and gives DOA4 more of a “world tour” vibe.
• The Story – Dead or Alive 4‘s story mode is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall a big improvement on its predecessors, and a rather epic culmination to the entire narrative to this point. Kasumi, the Mugen Tenshin clan, the Haijimon sect, and the Hayabusa clan are sick of DOATEC fucking around with their ninja affairs. As a result, they go on the offensive to destroy DOTATEC and stop them from unleashing Alpha-152, a super-powered clone of Kasumi. While the fourth tournament is going on, they attack and begin tearing the entire company down in true ninja style. Meanwhile, Helena is secretly enacting her own revenge against the company to help ensure its complete destruction. We actually get a decent sense of this story from the in-game narrative for once, due to some small changes to the campaign structure. Each character’s campaign plays differently in this game, and each one ends with different final bosses. This really incentivizes playing every story campaign so that you can piece together the plot (not to mention that you can’t get the true ending until you’ve completed all other characters’ stories). All that said, the story is only really good for Ayane, Hayate, Ryu, Zack, and Helena (especially Helena, her ending is downright awesome). Still, considering how epic the main plot is, I can excuse a few duds.
  • Special shout-out to Zack’s ending. It is ridiculous and needs to be seen to be believed. I love how tongue-in-cheek it is, blending pulp adventure, Ray Harryhausen stop motion (!), and goddamn Super Sentai, all with a generous helping of slapstick comedy and Dead or Alive‘s own signature fan service. What’s not to love?

Mixed

• Difficulty – Admittedly, this is a pretty weak mixed opinion here, but I feel like it’s worth noting. On normal difficulty, Dead or Alive 4 is the hardest game in the franchise since the original. In Dead or Alive 2, I could consistently finish a character’s campaign in about ten minutes. In Dead or Alive 4, a game with about the same number of fights to get through, a single campaign run would easily take me between twenty to thirty minutes (or even forty minutes if I’m stuck playing as a character I don’t like). I just found myself getting K.O.’d so many times as the fights get progressively harder. I am not sure exactly why this game was so much of a difficulty spike, but I believe that there’s been one big change made which really contributes: the window in which to execute a successful hold seems to have been reduced significantly. I used to be able to consistently land holds in DOA2 and 3 with relative ease. However, in this game, I found that I was having to be much more precise with my timing to land one. From a high-level standpoint, I can see how this makes sense. However, it ultimately means that holds are less viable and reliable, affecting the balance of the strikes-throws-holds triangle in the process. This is an issue, because the harder opponents will spam holds and/or critical stuns, which will let them effectively stun-lock your health bar to oblivion. Your only real counter to this? Holds… I sure hope you can git gud with your predictive and reactive skills, champ. All that said, I did kind of appreciate the satisfaction that comes from defeating a tough opponent, but the frustration to get there kind of balances that out.
• New Characters – For the first time in this franchise, I’m very mixed on the new characters introduced here in Dead or Alive 4:
  • We’ve got Kokoro, who is the definition of wasted potential. She is potentially interesting: she’s Helena’s secret half-sister, and she’s a geisha who secretly has a passion for martial arts, much to her mother’s disapproval. Potentially interesting ideas here, but nothing is made of it in her story (and, to make it worse, Kokoro has gotten zero development since). Oh, and to make matters worse, I despise her fighting style/move-set in-game. Easily one of my least-favourite characters in the franchise, she’s so dull all-round.
  • Then there’s Eliot. He is a young man who Gen Fu has taken on as an apprentice. Mechanically, that makes him a reskin of Gen Fu. However, narratively, he’s… alright. He’s naïve, polite, eager to learn, and seeking the approval of his master, but uncertain how to achieve it. Decent, but not a lot to latch onto.
  • Finally, there’s Lisa, who simply beggars belief. She was actually introduced in DOAXBV, but they’ve fleshed out her character and gone to some insane directions with her. She’s a DOATEC scientist, and she’s the one who performed the mind-control experiments on Hayate in Dead or Alive 2, and she’s also a secret lucha libre wrestler on the side!? It’s bonkers, but I kind of love how ridiculous it is… unfortunately, her character gets basically no development or anything interesting to do in the narrative. She does play really well though, I love how fast and fluid her fighting style is, so overall she’s probably my favourite (mostly) new character.
• The Xtreme-ification of Dead or Alive – As the first M-rated mainline Dead or Alive game, you can feel how Xtreme Beach Volleyball and the upcoming Xtreme 2 were influencing how these games were made. Sex had always been a part of the marketing of these games, but the actual in-game sexiness was largely confined to boob physics and some cleavage, but it never really felt egregious in any way. DOA4 is the first time where I can say that Team Ninja were consciously pushing this to make overt suggestive content a core part of this series’ image:
  • For one thing, the in-game costumes have started getting over-the-top. I can maybe justify Tina and Lisa fighting in a bikini top as being in-character for a wrestler, but Christie’s outfits are just ridiculous. Her main costume has her wearing an open jacket with no top on underneath, while another has her basically decked out in bondage gear. Not only that, but her entire ending is a video of her dancing in a strip club so she can assassinate some guy. I get that she’s a femme fatale, but these are clearly just pure fanservice at this point.
  • Some of the characters’ endings also seem to have been screwed over due to the push for more fanservice. Kasumi and Hitomi’s endings both have extended sequences of them prancing around topless (with convenient censoring to avoid any actual nudity), which might be a cheap thrill, but doesn’t provide a satisfying end to their campaigns’ storylines at all (this is especially bad for Kasumi, since she play a major role in the main plot and deserved a proper ending). Then there’s Leifang’s ending, which features her shirt tearing open due to her boobs being too big, and then she accidentally (?) gets groped by a guy on the train. It’s… uh, something.
  • Oh, and the boob physics in this game are way less subtle than they were in the last couple games. As a result, they actually look less natural here as they’re jiggling away compared to most of the other games in the franchise.

Hate

• Stagnation – Dead or Alive 4 is the first time where it feels like Dead or Alive is not giving its all. The game still has basically the same features as Dead or Alive 2 and plays very similarly. Like a lot of the very early Xbox 360 games, it doesn’t look much better than an original Xbox game either. This may have been down to the anime art style having reached the limits of what it could realistically achieve, but this is the first time I wasn’t really blown away by the graphics. In a lot of ways, it’s just “more of the same”.

Dead or Alive 4 is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s really just more of the same for the franchise. The franchise’s formula is still fun in its own right though, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you can feel that the franchise has plateaued and isn’t sure where to go from here. If not for the story acting as a big culmination, Dead or Alive 4 would probably be a far less enjoyable experience.

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’re covering the first game in the notorious Dead or Alive spin-off franchise, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. What can I say about this game that it doesn’t say for itself? Well, if you were interested in video games at the time this came out, there’s a good chance that this was your first impression of Dead or Alive. I had never heard of the series before, but I distinctly remember getting second-hand embarrassment every time I saw the box art for this game at the rental store. Despite that, the game reviewed shockingly well and this particular game has a pretty good reputation even to this day. How does this game hold-up in the face of its follow-ups? Read on to find out…

Once again, there’s only been one release of this game, that being on the original Xbox, so no need to go over alternate versions this time…

Love

• The Volleyball – DOAXBV seems like it’s an April Fool’s joke born out of all the jokes about this series’ sexy girl marketing. It would be like if Nier suddenly announced a wet t-shirt contest spin-off, or if Final Fantasy announced a female-only mud-wrestling game. In a lot of respects, this is kind of a joke brought to life, but Team Ninja execute that joke properly by making the volleyball legitimately enjoyable to play. The systems aren’t super deep, but there’s enough here that it’s fun to learn the ropes and playing a few rounds is quick, easy, and enjoyable.
• Very Relaxing Atmosphere – One thing that the DOAX games have always really excelled at is making you feel like you’re on vacation. Too many games can just feel like a chore to play, but DOAXBV seems designed to have you just chill and take it easy. In this regard, DOAXBV may be the most relaxing entry in this spin-off series. Since the only real activities are volleyball or lounging around, it doesn’t feel like you’re wasting time if you choose to skip a match and just watch your chosen girl taking it easy for a few seconds.
• Licensed Soundtrack – While I’m not really a fan of this game’s pop soundtrack, it’s hard to deny that the fairly large playlist of licensed tracks really enhance the relaxing atmosphere of the game. It’s also pretty cool that you can add or remove tracks from the playlist in-game.
• Exhibition Mode – It’s pretty cool that this game gives you the option to ignore all the constraints of a full vacation and just play a custom round of volleyball by yourself or with a friend. It’s also pretty cool that you can choose any of the girls for this mode and they’ll have any outfits that you’ve unlocked for them available to choose from. This mode is also particularly notable since none of the other Xtreme games feature this mode.
• Graphics – A game like this lives and dies based on its graphics, and it’s no exaggeration to say that DOAXBV holds up. The character models are as good as they were in DOA3 and the anime-like art style of these games helps to make this game still look pretty impressive more than twenty years after it released (the sand physics are especially cool to see in real-time).
• The Sexy Aspects Are… Tasteful? – Look, the Dead or Alive series, and especially the Xtreme spin-offs, have a reputation for being kind of creepy. Leaving aside the fact that Kasumi and Ayane are both underage, the sexy aspects of DOAXBV are… not that bad? I’m serious, there’s a voyeuristic element to the game, but it doesn’t really cross any objectionable lines in my opinion (again, ignoring that two of the characters are, according to the game designers, technically underage…). The girls are all on vacation, having fun, and playing volleyball while trying out various swimsuits. We just happen to get a look into this world to see what they’re up to, but we’re not intruding, or putting them in uncomfortable situations, or anything like that. As far as these kinds of games go, it’s downright wholesome to see and makes the game a lot easier to recommend.

Hate

• Content Wears Thin – As I said earlier, there is very little to do in DOAXBV: you’ve got volleyball, relaxing, pool hopping, buying items, or heading to the casino at nighttime. That’s it. This is a fourteen day vacation, split up into morning, day, evening segments. Volleyball’s fun, but I was growing a bit bored of it quickly. Like I said earlier, it feels like Team Ninja knew this and threw in sexy relaxation scenes to break up the monotony, but well-before the end of the vacation, I was getting pretty bored. This is the sort of game that benefits from short play sessions, because the repetition really starts to sour the experience quickly.
• Dating Sim Elements – Easily the worst part about DOAXBV (and this spin-off series in general) are the dating sim elements. Every girl has certain items that they like and, if you want to partner with them for volleyball or have them accept some of your unique swimwear, you need to gift them a couple times to make them like you. I just hate how rigid this system is: you either go in blind and basically just play a complete guessing game, or you look at a guide and it becomes a game of colour by numbers. It’s so tedious. Worst of all, you have to engage with it for a couple reasons: 1) in order to give character-specific bikinis to the other girls, and 2) if you lose a couple matches, then your partner will ditch you the next morning and you’ll have to find someone else to join you. Of course, you could just choose to play the rest of the game solo, but then you will be completely unable to play any more volleyball (which is where all the content in the game is).
• Tarnished the Series’ Reputation – I’ve long held the opinion that DOAXBV was the reason the entire franchise gained a negative reputation, but now that I’ve played through all the games to this point, I’ve pretty much confirmed my suspicions. DOA3 was pushing the envelope a bit, both in terms of in-game fanservice and its marketing, it still was certainly no worse than other fighters of the time. However, it’s like I said up-top: that cover art for DOAXBV made way more people aware of this franchise, and their first impression was that these games were porn. Even the title itself promises something far more salacious than what we actually get here. And, unfortunately, this perception would stick to the series going forward, to the point where even the developers embraced it.

For a joke brought to life, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball isn’t a terrible time. It’s enjoyable enough in short stints, but the lack of content really makes the game wear thin quickly. However, it provides enough of a foundation that you can see how they could potentially improve and expand upon its ideas in future follow-ups. Boy howdy, it sure is convenient that I just got amnesia, so I get to be excited to see where these spin-offs go in the future…

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’re going to be covering the next entry in the series, Dead or Alive 3. Having never owned an Xbox, and not being very good at fighting games, this game was about as far off my radar as could be at the time of its release. However, I’d argue that Dead or Alive 3 represents the franchise at its apex of critical and commercial success, before the series’ reputation turned into a joke and Xbox exclusivity went from a selling-point to tanking its global market share. With that said, would DOA3 be able to live up to the success of its predecessor? Read on to find out…

Unlike the other games we’ve covered so far, there is only one release of Dead or Alive 3 and that’s on the original Xbox (a launch title again, no less). So, naturally, that’s the game I played here for this analysis. Enjoy.

Love

• New Characters – A new entry in a fighting game means new characters, and there are some pretty great additions here in Dead or Alive 3:
  • Hitomi – First off, we’ve got my main for this franchise, Hitomi. She’s great, what can I say? She’s pretty, but not to a gaudy degree like some other characters in this franchise. She’s strong, having mastered karate at her father’s dojo and now seeking to prove herself on the world stage. She’s also very playful, but has a fierce confidence to her which makes her instantly likeable. She also clearly has feelings for Hayate, who she aided when he lost his memories. Now that Hayate has taken up his place as leader of the Mugen Tenshin clan, they are unable to reconcile the relationship they had before, and this somewhat tragic and sympathetic characterization is a driving force for Hitomi going forward. Plus she’s just plain fun to play. The fact that she makes her debut here gives DOA3 a major boost in my eyes.
  • Then there’s Brad Wong. Character-wise, he’s not actually all that interesting or important. However, what makes him standout is his fighting style. He’s a full-on alcoholic drunken master and this lends him an incredibly distinctive and fun fighting style which can be difficult to face-off against.
  • Then there’s Christie, one of the more important secondary characters in the series. She is an assassin who has been hired to kill Helena (and we later find out is responsible for killing her mother as well). She is also one of the more overtly-sexualized characters in the series (alongside Tina Armstrong), which fits in with her femme fatale characterization. Her fighting style is also perfect for her character, showing her extreme precision with which she dispatches her foes, reminiscent of a snake striking.
  • Hayate also makes his official debut here in DOA3. He was technically in DOA2 as Ein, but now that he has his memories back, he actually plays completely differently, so I think it’s fair enough to note him separately. Plot-wise, he’s pretty important to the overall saga, even if he’s probably the least-interesting of the new characters in terms of personality and playstyle.
• Graphics – It might seem like a no-brainer that DOA3 would be better-looking than DOA2, but you really have to see this game in motion to appreciate it. Fidelity everywhere has been improved by a lot, but the most impressive things are the little details. The stage “Snow” is a snow-covered forest and, my God, the snow effects are legitimately impressive. The snow deforms as you move through it, stays that way for the duration of the fight and, if you get knocked into a tree, then blankets of snow will fall down from the treetops. The ninja temple also has a mirror-reflection on the floor which looks insanely good even today in 2024. DOA2‘s presentation was great, albeit with some rough edges that were easy to ignore. With this art style and the additional details, DOA3 just looks downright amazing, full-stop.
• Stage Design – Another key way in which DOA3 improves on its predecessor is in its stages. Rather than just designing more stage hazards, Team Ninja have gotten creative with the types of stages you can battle on. For example, the “Forest” stage is very large and dotted with trees throughout which you can fight around and then knock your opponent into to extend a combo or cause additional damage. It completely shakes up the “flat square with walls” stages that you usually run into in 3D fighters and makes positioning and move choice extremely important. Then there’s the “Ice Cave”, where you can launch enemies into large icicles, which shatter on impact, changing the stage itself in the process. Then there’s the usual falling stage hazards and walls which we’re used to, but the added variety is extremely welcome. Even the more “traditional” stages like “Aqua Palace”, which takes place in an underwater glass dome, are absolutely gorgeous to look at. DOA3 has, hands down, some of the best stages in the series and they make every battle just that much more interesting.
• Ayane – I need to give Ayane a special shout-out in this game. Dead or Alive games struggle to create compelling narratives, but they really managed to craft a satisfying story here for Ayane. As I said in DOA2‘s entry, Ayane is very tragic. Despite being half-sisters, Kasumi was treated as a princess, whereas Ayane was shunned by her clan for being conceived during the rape of her mother. This led to resentment between her and her half-sister and she threw herself into the way of the ninja to gain the love of her adopted father, Genra. In the previous two games, Ayane spent her entire narrative chasing after Kasumi to try to kill her for abandoning their village. This, of course, ended in failure each time. However, in this game, Genra has been captured by DOATEC and experimented on, turning him into a living weapon. Despite the insistence of Hayate and Ryu Hayabusa that they will deal with Genra, Ayane views it as her duty to put him out of his misery, both as his protégé and his daughter. This gives her a much more compelling narrative and, when she ultimately succeeds, it’s a sad moment. You’re happy to see Ayane triumph for once, but her ending shows her crying over what she had to do and the uncertainty of her future in the wake of this event. It’s genuinely heartbreaking and it really cements her as one of my favourite characters in this franchise.

Hate

• Genra Fight – Tengu was a really weird final boss for DOA2, but he at least played like a fitting final boss for that game. Genra, though? Genra is fucking bullshit. You reach the final boss and then suddenly the camera angle of the game changes to over-the-shoulder (despite the controls remaining entirely the same, so it throws your entire perception and orientation off). Genra’s entire gameplay involves pushing you back as far as possible and then hitting you with one of three ranged attacks: a sweeping flamethrower, a blast wave, and an energy ball. You have to perform very specific actions to avoid getting hit by these attacks (either a ducking move to avoid the flamethrower or move IMMEDIATELY when he starts the attack to outrun the sweep, and side-stepping to avoid the wave and energy ball), which effectively turns this stage of the fight into more of an action game or platformer than a traditional fighter. Then, when you close the distance with him, he has a very limited moveset, which can be easily cheesed by holds, which will put you behind him so you can get some more hits in. Oh, and if you launch him into the air with one of your attacks, when he hits the ground it creates a blast which damages you and knocks you backwards, putting you back into the “dodge ranged attacks” part of the fight again. It’s infuriating, punishes characters with movesets which have a lot of launches (like Helena), and just encourages you to cheese the hell out of the fight rather than actually… y’know, playing a fighting game normally. It’s a terrible way to end the game and single-handedly lowers Dead or Alive 3 overall in my estimation.
• Story Presentation – The story presentation in Dead or Alive 3 is pretty much identical to its predecessor (immediately thrown into fights, you get a short cutscene between them sometimes, repeat). Considering that the narrative presentation was one of my few complaints about Dead or Alive 2, it’s pretty disappointing to see it remain unchanged here. The only substantial difference is that each character gets a longer ending cutscene… however, this is also a disappointment, because most of these “endings” are extremely unsatisfying. The aforementioned ending for Ayane is the one big exception, and the endings for Tina, Zack, and Gen Fu are good enough, but for the rest…
  • First of all, there’s the ending which don’t really communicate anything new: Kasumi’s still on the run from her clan. Jann Lee’s still out here fighting people to become the strongest. Leifang goes and beats up some yakuza thugs who tried to kidnap a kid… good on you, but I don’t think this is something you were incapable of before the tournament? Bass’s motorcycle breaks down in the desert and he smashes it, tries to fix it, and gets mad when Tina passes him in a sports car. And then there’s Leon… he goes to a desert oasis and sees a mirage of his dead lover.
  • Then there’s the endings which feel more like an introductory cutscene: Hitomi reminisces about besting her father and leaving the dojo to find stronger foes to overcome. Bayman remembers how his parents died in a war and then goes out to kill Donovan… which was supposed to be his entire motivation throughout this game already, so shouldn’t his ending have him actually trying to do the deed? Then there’s Ryu’s ending, which sees him fishing and then he gets a new ninja assignment and leaves… there’s a cyclical, professional quality to it, but it’s kind of unsatisfying as an ending compared to if it was the introduction to the character.
  • Then there’s the endings which are just a big “nothing”: Brad Wong’s entire ending is just him meditating. Hayate’s is similar, he just stands around in a tree and then jumps out to go do ninja shit.
  • Oh, and then there’s the ending which are literally just fanservice. Helena is on her boat in a red bikini and then jumps into the ocean to swim with dolphins while the camera luxuriates on her body. And then there’s Christie, who has a shower scene with rear nudity and then struts around her apartment in her underwear. It’s by far the most overt, in-game fanservice in the franchise up to this point. I guess you could make the argument that it’s a decent “reward” for the player to unlock, but narratively, these are very unsatisfying endings.
• Sparse Unlocks – One of the ways that DOA games incentivize trying out every character and game mode is by rewarding the player with unlockable characters and costumes. At the very least, you usually get a costume as a reward when you complete a character’s story mode. Dead or Alive 3 bucks this trend in the worst way. There are very few unlockables in this game: usually around one costume per character, and you can also unlock Ein as a playable character. Making matters worse is that there are more costumes available, but they were confined to DLC and/or an Official Xbox Magazine bonus disc, meaning that they’re basically unobtainable today.
• Xbox Exclusivity – This one is a bit complicated, but I think that Team Ninja’s move to Xbox exclusivity starting with this game really knee-capped the franchise’s future. Let’s break this down:
  • First of all, I do have to admit that the Xbox era was a creative and financial boon for Team Ninja. Dead or Alive 3 and the Ninja Gaiden games were major successes for the studio, so I can see why sticking with Xbox seemed like a no-brainer. However, history has shown that the Xbox brand fared incredibly poorly outside North America, so an Asian developer like Team Ninja was ultimately limiting its reach and appeal by sticking with the console for as long as they did (this can also be seen in how the Ninja Gaiden games ended up getting ported to PlayStation within a couple years of release). I suspect that more than ten years of Xbox exclusivity shrank the market share for Dead or Alive, especially compared to its competition.
  • The controllers for the first couple Xbox consoles were also known for not being very good for fighting games, which likely further dis-incentivized people from trying these games out or from taking them seriously compared to their competition.

One of the biggest struggles that Dead or Alive 3 has is that it lives in the shadow of its predecessor. On the one hand, it’s nearly identical in terms of modes and gameplay, with the only major difference being that full 3D movement is much easier to perform. DOA2 already played well, so this means that DOA3 also plays well. However, you expect a sequel to expand upon its foundations and you can’t help but compare it unfavourably when it does not. Between the poor final boss and limited unlockable content, DOA3 isn’t quite able to live up to DOA2, but it’s still a good time in its own right, especially considering the new characters and stage variety on offer. It’s just too bad that we couldn’t get a fully-realized version of the game, because maybe then Dead or Alive 3 could have been the best entry in the franchise.